One of my favorite stories in pro wrestling is that of the Andy Kaufman-Jerry Lawler feud, which had Kaufman, beloved for his quirky “Foreign Man” character on the hit sitcom “Taxi,” playing the heel in the Memphis territory, eventually needling Lawler, the babyface star in Memphis, into a series of one-on-one and proxy matches stretching out over nearly two years.
I only recently came to realize that Kaufman was the heel in the feud in Memphis, but not elsewhere – most notably, national TV.
Kaufman was a regular on “Late Night with David Letterman,” which debuted in 1982, and would get put on the map by the infamous July 28, 1982, episode, in which Lawler slapped Kaufman, who was wearing a neck brace to sell injuries from two piledrivers delivered by Lawler in their first match, on April 5, and Kaufman responded by throwing coffee and a string of expletives back at “The King.”
I’ve seen the clip numerous times, but in a vacuum, it never made sense to me that Kaufman had come out to the set to cheers from the studio audience, which showered Lawler with lusty boos as he made his entrance.
Then I stumbled, via YouTube, onto a video collection of Kaufman appearances on “Late Night,” which had Letterman questioning Kaufman on his wrestling career, which Kaufman sold as being authentic, presenting Lawler as a 260-pound brute who couldn’t take a joke.
The appearances would include clips of Kaufman from Memphis TV insulting Memphis wrestling fans as dumb hicks, including one in which he demonstrated to the local TV audience there how to use soap, which the New York fans, of course, ate up.
Down in Memphis, of course, not so much.
Kaufman, we would learn, had been a fan of pro wrestling since childhood, and dreamed of one day being a wrestling heel, even working a wrestling-heel bit into his nightclub act – he claimed to be the “intergender champion of the world,” challenging women to shoot matches for a thousand-dollar prize, adding later a stipulation that any woman who could pin him would also get his hand in marriage.
Classic heel work there.
One of the “Late Night” appearances had Kaufman demonstrating his deadly headlock on Letterman, only, no, it wasn’t exactly deadly.
He applied that same headlock on Lawler in their April 5 match; Lawler turned the headlock into a belly-to-back suplex, which had Kaufman landing on his head, before the two piledrivers, which were kayfabe illegal in the Memphis territory, making Kaufman the winner by disqualification.
As the story goes, Kaufman sold the piledrivers by insisting on being taken from the ring and the arena on a stretcher and into an ambulance, and tricked his doctors into thinking he had legitimate neck injuries to justify an extended hospital stay.
He kept the game up for his next appearances on “Late Night,” putting the business over more than any wrestler ever could, because this was Latka from “Taxi,” right?
That the match, the fight on “Late Night,” for that matter, the entire feud, had been staged – a “work,” in wrestling parlance – would remain a mystery for years.
Even Kaufman’s close friends in the entertainment business didn’t know, which is why the documentary “I’m from Hollywood,” released in 1989, five years after Kaufman’s death from cancer, at the age of 35, wasn’t a mockumentary along the lines of “This is Spinal Tap.”
His friends interviewed for the doc – including Robin Williams and “Taxi” co-stars Tony Danza and Marilu Henner – genuinely thought Kaufman was really wrestling, and really injured, at the various points during his escapade.
Incidentally, Kaufman’s parents were also not made aware by their son that the business wasn’t on the up-and-up.
When they met Lawler on the set of “Man on the Moon,” the 1999 film on Kaufman’s life and career starring Jim Carrey, they told “The King” that they had hated him for years for what they thought Lawler had done to their son.
For everything else Andy Kaufman did in his brief career – the starring role on “Taxi,” the guest appearance on the debut episode of “Saturday Night Live,” the all-time Elvis Presley impersonation – his turn as a territory wrestling heel was his best work.
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Chris Graham
